Destination Imagination students take second place in competition

On Saturday, Oct. 29, Norfolk Collegiate’s Destination Imagination students took second place in the Third Annual Student Model Water Tower Competition at Old Dominion University.

The competition, which was hosted by the American Water Works Association Virginia Section, was open to private, public and home-schooled middle school students throughout Hampton Roads.

Eighteen Collegiate students formed five teams and competed against four schools.

The second-place team was named the Mighty Oaks and included Zac Fowler ’22, Naomi Hohnholt ’22 and Maggie Campbell ’22.

“The general idea was to make the design as light as possible and for it to be aesthetically pleasing,” said Naomi.

“We thought of how a lot of the earth’s water is in the ocean, so our design included coral reefs and fishes,” said Maggie. “This helped us to make it look nice and match the theme of water.”

“It was really exciting to know that we placed,” said Zac. “I really liked how we used the sawdust and sand, and how we painted the tower. Also, it was very nice how the top was kind of a dock or boat.”

Each team used re-purposed materials from home and MarkerLab 2 to bring their ideas to life.

“It was the first year that nearly all of the teams used recycled materials to build their water towers,” said Claire Fornsel, middle school science teacher. “The MakerLab gives them all the materials, space and tools to create something. Everything that they needed was in the space,” she continued. “The whole idea of building things for one purpose but you have five different ways to do it is the coolest thing.”